The 6 Most Absurd Origins of an Ancient God

The Gods of Old were all-powerful, spiteful, and most of all, nymphomaniacs. Most of the deities in any polytheistic religion boil down to one god ing another god and then making a baby god. Then the daddy god s the daughter god and more gods appear. The cycle repeats. Eventually, there are so many gods that there is even a god of masturbation. But that is beside the point. What’s important is, they loved conceiving children and then giving birth in a normal way.

Or did they? Some gods were born or conceived in the most retarded fashions imaginable. It makes you wonder, just what kind of crack were the ancients on?

6.

Second Generation of Frost Giants

Mythology of Origin: Norse

The Myth:

This myth begins in the same way that most creation myths begin – there is nothing in the beginning, and then there is a creature. In this case, the creature is sleeping.

The world’s first creature, according to Nordic mythology, was named Ymir, the founder of the race of frost giants.

His children, an unnamed son, an unnamed daughter, and a third, six-headed monstrosity of a frost giant, named Þrúðgelmir (pronounced… Wharglebarglefargle? No, it really isn’t; Thruhd-gel-mere), were born in bizarre ways. His unnamed son and unnamed daughter were born from the armpits of this astounding beast: one from the left and the other from the right (implied).

What’s bizarre about this origin myth is not the fact that his children were born from his pits (well, that is weird) but the fact that they arose out of a pregnant armpit with a fully formed body.

His third child, Þrúðgelmir, was born in an even stranger fashion. Ymir’s left leg and his right leg got jiggy with it and out popped a fully-formed six headed monstrosity. This implies, however, that his legs were of different sexes. While this has not been observed in the real-world just yet, scientists are still looking for the descendents of frost giants whose legs are capable of reproducing with one another.

5.

The Enrinyes/The Gigantes/Aphrodite

Mythology of Origin: Greek

The Myth:

In the beginning, there were just two deities: Uranus and Gaia. Uranus personified the sky and Gaia personified the Earth. Uranus was the husband of Gaia, and they had children together. Such an arrangement is common in ancient creation stories. However, what is not common is that the father hated his children. In fact, he hated them so much that he had them imprisoned in his wife, Gaia, causing her a great deal of pain.

Her pain must have been so terrible, in fact, that she ordered her husband castrated. Forming a huge knife from the Earth, she told her sons to go cut off her husband’s dick, a story that is well known even today.

Particularly, it was Cronus, the next king of the gods, who performed the deed of genital-hacking.

Once the dickocide was done, the blood pouring from his genitals struck the ground and created a whole cast of creatures in the Greek pantheon. The Enrinyes, the Three Fates, were formed from this castration. The Gigantes, the Giants, were also formed.

Cronus proceeded to throw his father’s dick into the sea, and from the foam that developed, Aphrodite was born.

What makes this myth remarkable is that they call this process of being born from the penis of a god “fertilization.” The Greek explanation is that Gaia was the Earth, so that when the blood struck the Earth, she was “fertilized,” much in the same way that, when a fish’s blood touches its wife’s eggs, the eggs are fertilized. Or something.

4.

Hermaphroditus

Mythology of Origin: Greek

The Myth:

It’s the story of a normal, pre-civilization Greek boy. He was the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, a strange couple indeed. But, he was not raised in this unlikely household. Instead, it is said that he was raised in caves on Mount Ida in modern-day Turkey by nymphs.

Once he turned 15, however, his whole life went sour. We can only assume that he became depressed about a girl (or a guy, we can’t be sure) and wanted to kill himself. Despite his probable desire of suicide, it was not to be. Instead, he met a nymph in a pool named Salmacis.

Despite her attractiveness, she fell in love with the boy. But, further promoting our belief that he was secretly gay, the Hermaphroditus rejected her. She decided that she would trick him, not unlike the wives of many. She disappeared from the water, making him think that she was no longer there. He proceeded to undress and start bathing.

Being the devious nymph(o) she was, she ambushed him and wrap herself around him, asking that the gods to never separate them again. So, taking her literally, the gods made the water nymph and Hermaphroditus merge into one being, forming the first hermaphrodite.

While this is not the birth of a god, it is the origin story of a deity. The absurdity of this myth comes from the literalness that the gods decided to have. (Also, the fact that a 15-year-old boy would reject a water nymph, but that is a story for another day.)